Notes from the Crisis: Trump and the electoral college

trumpdeathThe next major stage in the crisis is looming. Trump is the not-yet the President Elect – merely the candidate with the most pledged electors in the Electoral College.

The 538 electors are split 306 to 232 in Trumps favour and ‘meet’ to elect the President.

The college never meets as a collective body, the electors for each state meet on the 19th December and must submit their signed ballots by the 28th.

The political prerequisites for the electoral college electing someone else are:

•a clear alternative Republican candidate endorsed by Clinton
•a collective group of never-Trump Republican electors

Neither of these exist.

The Democrats remain paralyzed by the result. If the Republicans had won the popular vote but lost the electoral college they would be going crazy. They went crazy over donations to Clinton’s charities from Foreign Governments before she was selected. If there was evidence of foreign propaganda intervention directly on her side during the election, well, of that we need speak no more.

The electors, largely local worthies in the State parties, will never physically meet each other. Indeed, many will first meet the other electors from their state at the state capital on Monday.

What is the significance of the Electoral College then?

The real challenge to the autocracy is the confirmation of the various Presidential nominees, especially those to security or justice positions. That confirmation will be done by the Senate – a body with a lot of people who came out as never-Trump and a pronounced collective existence.

161129212927-trump-romney-exlarge-169We have already seen some aggressive management of never-Trumplets. Mitt Romney is called in and goes. The suggestion that he will be Secretary of State is floated. The famous Romney-hostage-photo is snapped and distributed by the Trump team.

Romney is bypassed for the job and it turns out that he was asked to publicly apologise, to bend the knee and he refused. But the impression he has was purposefully made by the transition team – a signal to others that if Mitt can, you should.

The pattern is repeated with the leading tech industrialists, summoned to give the impression of a technocratic administration leading the brightest and best. They too are co-opted, but not being professional politicians do not automatically dissemble in the presence of cameras and appear in the photos as diners before a turd in the soup.

The Electoral College will be turned into another loyalty parade, a softening up of the Republican senatorial group. It is hard to remember that the ‘transition’ is normally a very quiet political time, nothing happens, the new President’s team beaver away in near silence, waiting for the accession.

By contrast Trump has used the transition as the occasion to stage a series of spectacles, receiving foreign leaders in his home, convening strange summits of technologists, going on a victory tour.

The audience for the Electoral College is the newly sworn Senators. The play is for them. And if they prove to be recalcitrant on the first nominees then a second play can be staged. US police kill 20 people a week, often African American, often unarmed. The next Reichstag Fire is only a few days away, and if that one isn’t convenient there will be another right along.

Comments (6)

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  1. tartanfever says:

    ‘If there was evidence of foreign propaganda intervention directly on her side during the election, well, of that we need speak no more.’

    Obviously you wrote this before Obama’s very public threat today to Russia. So while Trump has been playing a very public game, it turns out that so is Obama. Today he decided that ‘alleged,’maybe’, and ‘apparently’ all suffice as ‘definite’ that Putin had direct input into rigging the US election and he threatened the leader of a country with over 2,000 nukes that America will take it’s revenge at the time and place of their choosing.

    Of course, Obama won’t be president when that happens as he leaves after Christmas, it will be Trump that has to deal with it.

    While America’s internal disputes are of threat really only to America, threats to Russia clearly require international scrutiny.

    Is this really the wisdom of a Nobel peace prize winner ?

    1. Patrick says:

      CIA and FBI agree Russia intervened in US presidential election

      How Russia interfered in the US presidential election , simple :” All RusianAmerican vote for him”. So what?

      Perhaps, it also happen with the Brexit in UK, but the haker could be chineses.

  2. Alan says:

    Yes, I wouldn’t hold out much hope that the electoral college will do anything other than wave Trump through. For a longer explanation see: Why it’s so difficult to get the Electoral College to Dump Trump.

    1. Alan says:

      Follow-up post on electoral collrge.

  3. John O'Dowd says:

    Spot-on analysis

    Serious political maneuvering going on between various factions withing the Deep State

    The Clinton faction supported by MSM propaganda is accusing Moscow of intervening in the US elections on behalf of Trump. Craig Murray provides a serious challenge to the veracity of the ‘Russians did it’ propaganda here:

    (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/russian-bear-uses-keyboard/

    The (un)beaten Democrats are also intent upon shifting the Electoral College vote in favour of Clinton with a view to blocking president-elect Trump’s accession to the White House.

    If they succeed, the U.S. would be precipitated into a major political crisis. It should be noted that this process is also coupled with extensive anti-Trump protests across America, organized by the Clinton faction.

    It should be noted that stealing the presidency is not unprecedented Dubya (2000) had it stolen for him by the Supreme Court – the Democrats won the popular vote then too – and would have won the College vote too had the Supreme Court not ordered Florida to stop counting the votes (such a damned nuisance – votes).

    Fundamental rivalries within the US establishment with clashes between competing corporate factions, each intent on exerting controlling the incoming US presidency.

    What we are seeing are deep divisions within the elite structures concerning America’s global military agenda. Any threat not to continue fighting wars (directly or proxy) which burn up expensive military inventory would cost the Arms business trillions – up with which they will not put.

    Different branches of the mafia competing for control of the nominal capo di tutti capi – nominal in that the US Presidency has long been under Corporate control.

    Their big problem is that nut-job Trump may not want to be controlled – in which case its grassy knoll time again – and pissing-off the CIA is just another road to Dallas.

    1. James Dow says:

      I think the nut – job might be you. How do you stack up compared to Donald Trumps achievements?

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